Night Bombing with the Bedouins by Robert Henry Reece

Author:Robert Henry Reece [Reece, Robert Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, World War, 1914-1918 -- Aerial operations
Published: 2008-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER V

SOME EPICS OF NIGHT BOMBING

I

In the summer of 1917 the Germans were rushing troops up to the Ypres front, where the activities of the British threatened them at this point in their line. This movement of troops was made at night, as usual, because if made in daylight they would have been plainly visible to our reconnaissance and artillery observation squadrons. These troops were detrained at Menin and were transported by motor lorry along the Menin-Gelevelt road. On a certain evening the first night-bombing squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, then situated west of Nieppe Forest, was ordered to delay in every possible way this movement of enemy troops. The result must have been satisfactory, for the General in command of the British Army on that front sent us, a few days later, the glad tidings that no German reinforcements arrived at the critical moment and all the British objectives had been captured and held. Whether or not the only night-bombing squadron engaged in that action was responsible for the tie-up of the Hun transportation system is problematical, but all the members of the squadron remember that night and hope that their efforts were of value.

The only thing out of the ordinary that evening in the squadron's routine was the mounting of double guns in the aeroplanes and an earlier dinner hour; the dinner, possibly, was gayer than usual. The machines left the ground in daylight, gained their height over Nieppe Forest and crossed the lines at dusk, swooped down over Menin Station and dropped their bombs at an altitude of one thousand to five hundred feet. Then, nose down, engine "full out," they raced away from Menin and followed, in the brilliant moonlight, the road to Gelevelt, flying within one hundred feet of the ground.

A heavy fire at close range at the transports on the road and at the shadows of the trees cast by the moon, as the case might be, soon exhausted the drums of ammunition. Each aviator did his level best to get results, all the time trying to avoid landing on the tree-tops; some of them did so land; they were shot down by the Huns. As soon as their ammunition was gone they headed for home and, crossing the lines at a low altitude, were shot at by anti-aircraft batteries and machine guns from the ground and "bumped" here and there by the air displacement of passing shells from the steadily flashing guns of both their own and the enemy's artillery.

When they arrived at their aerodrome there was a breathing-spell for the aviators while the bomb-racks were being refilled with bombs, the empty ammunition drums replaced with full ones, and the engines replenished with petrol, oil, and water. The planes then roared into the air again, climbed for a short time, and then headed for Menin, where railway communications were again bombed and the Menin-Gelevelt road was again raked with machine-gun fire.

After a brief respite on the return from this second raid, the machines again took off and raided the Huns for the third time that night.

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